HOW WELL DOES THE LARYNX “CANAL” MATCH THE EAR CANAL ?

Ingo R. Titze

Brad H. Story

While everybody is familiar with their ear canal, nobody is able to identify or give a reference in
the literature to a “larynx canal”. For many years, a laryngeal airway above the vocal folds has been
labeled the larynx tube (Sundberg, 1974), the epilaryngeal tube (Titze and Story, 1997), or simply the
epilarynx (Story, 2016). The word canal, however,
may be an excellent descriptor because the
geometry is rather complex and only partially
tube-like. Figure 1 is a comparison of the two
canals. On the left is shown a Magnetic
Resonance image of a mid-sagittal cross-section
through the vocal tract airway (black is air, gray is
tissue). On the right, a sketch of the outer and
middle ear is shown. The two canals are
highlighted with dashed boxes and their mean
dimensions given below.

Anatomically, the larynx canal is the

Fig. 1. Anatomy of the ear canal and the larynx
canal. Left image from Story et al., 2001, by
permission. Right image from Foundations of Speech
and Hearing: Anatomy and Physiology, Second Edition
(pp. 1-348) by Hoit, J.D., Weismer, G., & Story, B.
Copyright © 2022 Plural Publishing, Inc. All rights
reserved. Used with permission.
Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved. Used with
permission.
combination of the ventricle, the ventricular fold
glottis, and the laryngeal vestibule (Fig.2, now
shown in coronal view)). The similarity between
the larynx canal and the ear canal in terms of
their acoustic functions has only recently been
discussed (Titze and Verdolini Abbott, 2012). This
airway above the vocal folds has a remarkable
acoustic reciprocity with the airway leading to
the ear drum, the outer ear and the ear canal.
The reciprocity seems logical, given that sound is
produced with vibrating tissue (the vocal folds),
guided into free airspace by the vocal tract, and
gathered by the listener back from free airspace
into the ear canal and then to the inner ear with
tissue vibration (the ear drum).

Consider a comparison between the airway

Fig. 2. Sketch of coronal section through the
larynx canal. From Titze and Verdolini (2012),
used with permission.
dimensions of the vocal tract and the outer ear.
The average length of an adult human ear canal
is 2.5 cm, about the same length as the larynx
canal, or the epilarynx tube (Story et al.,1996;
Story et al., 2001). The cross-sectional area of
the ear canal is 0.62 cm2, while the mean cross-
sectional area of the larynx canal across both sexes is 0.5 cm2 (Story et al.,1996; Story et al.,2001. The
acoustic impedance of the ear canal (without reflections) is

z = ρ c /A

where ρ is the air density, c is the speed of sound, and A is the cross-sectional area. The calculation
yields 64 g / (s cm4). In comparison, the same calculation on the larynx canal yields 80 g / (s cm4), a
similar value. The impedance of the ear drum is highly variable with frequency, with a mid-range value
of about 300 g/ (s cm4) (Withnell and Gowdy, 2013). By comparison, the glottal impedance, also highly
variable with glottal adduction, has a mid-range value of about 50 g / (s cm4) (Konnai et al., 2017). It
must be pointed out, however, that there is no fluid flow through the ear drum. The acoustic airflow is
only a displacement flow of the ear drum tissue, which makes the impedance (the pressure-flow ratio)
larger by a factor of about six. Additionally, because both the ear and larynx canals can be considered
closed at one end (eardrum and glottis, respectively) and open at the other (free space and widened
lower pharynx, respectively), the resonance frequencies of each would be nearly the same, depending
on the overall shape of the canals. However, there seems to be an adaptation in the dimensions of the
larynx canal, beginning at birth and progressing with gender and age. Adult female larynx canals are
about 1.6 cm long and have cross-sectional area of 0.25-0.35 cm2. For children, these dimensions would
be even smaller. It would be fruitful to investigate whether these adaptations are for the purpose of an
impedance match for maximum power transfer or maximum speech intelligibility for the given age and
gender.

In humans, the outer ear (the pinna) is made of ridged cartilage covered by skin. It is not
tubular, but shell-like. In other species, the pinna is partially tube-
like, mirroring at least a part of an expanding vocal tract. Sound
funnels through the pinna into the ear canal, the tube that ends at
the eardrum (known as the tympanic membrane). Some non-
human species, e.g., long-eared gerboas and mule deer, have
pinnae comparable in length to their vocal tract lengths. Fig. 3
shows the mule deer pinnae. Directivity of the received sound is
optimized with a semi-circular open channel rather than a
completely closed tube. Animals have developed the musculature

to rotate their ears in multiple directions. The average length of

mule deer ears is about 50 cm, comparable to its vocal tract length. Fig. 3. Outer ears of a mule
deer. Courtesy Joshua
The early acoustic hearing aids were trumpet-like, Kraemer, by permission.
gathering the sound with a horn and gradually reducing the cross-
sectional area to approximate the diameter of the ear canal (Fig.4). Some directivity was achieved by
manually rotating the horn. The length of the horn was variable, in some cases being as large as a
megaphone used by cheerleaders. The larger the distal opening, the more sound can be gathered. As
with the vocal tract, sudden changes in the cross-sectional area produce standing waves, which would
make the reception frequency-dependent.

Fig. 4. Ear trumpet used as an
acoustic hearing aid. From Decker, K.
D. (2017). No copyright claimed.
This brief essay on the comparison between the ear
canal and the larynx canal has shown that impedance
matches exist not only between the source and the
transmission system, but also between the entire production
and the reception systems. For today’s human vocalizations,
the dynamic nature of the laryngo-pharynx for speech and
singing makes the quantitative comparison to the static
nature of the external ear canal more interesting. The vocal
tract configuration is variable from moment to moment, also
adapting to breathing and swallowing, but one wonders if
primal outdoor calling thousands of years ago, or infant cry
vocalizations, may have targeted matching configurations.
More research appears to be forthcoming on this topic.

References
Sundberg, J (1974). Articulatory interpretation of the singing formant. The Journal of the Acoustical
Society of America 55, 838

Titze, I.R., & Story, B. (1997). Acoustic interactions of the voice source with the lower vocal tract. J.
Acoust. Soc. Amer., 101(4), 2234-2243.

Story, B. H., Titze, I. R., & Hoffman, E. A. (2001). The relationship of vocal tract shape to three
voice qualities. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 109(4), 1651-1667.

Story B H (2016). The vocal tract in singing. The Oxford Handbook of Singing, G Welch, D Howard, and J
Nix, eds, Chapter 7, Oxford University Press.

Story, B. H., Titze, I. R., & Hoffman, E. A. (1996). Vocal tract area functions from magnetic
resonance imaging. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 100(1), 537-554.

Titze, I.R., & Verdolini Abbott, K. (2012). Vocology: The Science and Practice of Voice
Habilitation. National Center for Voice and Speech, Salt Lake City, UT.

Konnai, R., Scherer, R. C., Peplinski, A., & Ryan, K. (2017). Whisper and phonation:
Aerodynamic comparisons across adduction and loudness. Journal of Voice 31(6),
773e11.

Hoit J, Weismer G, and Story B (2021). Foundations of Speech and Hearing Science:
Anatomy and Physiology, Plural Publishing, New York.

Withnell R H, Gowdy, L E (2013). An Analysis of the Acoustic Input Impedance of the

Ear. J Assoc Res Otolaryngol. 14(5), 611–622.
Decker, K. D. (2017, August 24). Non-electric hearing aids outperform modern devices.
NO TECH MAGAZINE. Retrieved September 23, 2021, from
https://www.notechmagazine.com/2017/08/non-electric-hearing-aids-outperform-
modern-devices.html.